Obama has to hold the women if he wants to keep his job as President. Apparently he thinks it helps to do so by hugging them, as he did the women of ABC’s “The View,” a kind of everywoman’s Ratpack show. Reportedly, 5.6 million watched Obama’s appearance July 29. He also makes an effort to embrace women at his unstoppable string of post-election campaign stops.
The country has 8 million more women than men, and 57 percent of the pro-Obama vote in 2008 came from women, according to Gallup polling; and 65 percent of the unmarried females voted for him. Some 67 percent of the least educated—those with some grade school learning–cast votes for him.
In case hugs alone don’t work, Obama can expect some return from his Executive Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls to deal with issues they face and—the document said– “to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies across the federal government consider how their policies and programs” address the needs of women and girls, including women of color.
Obama’s current $3.8 trillion budget has programs a-plenty for women and girls, which will be exempted from spending restrictions placed on other programs. So reported news.mcclatchy.com. A budget document called “Opportunity and Progress for Women and Girls” described 15 federal programs to benefit females that would get increased funding.
Among the programs for women are $8.1 billion in food aid for low-income pregnant women, infants and kids up to age 5, plus $3.9 billion for child care and Head Start meals. For family planning, $327 million is made available, with expanded access to contraception. Family planning is provided through more than 4,500 clinics providing services to approximately five million persons annually. Included also is $205 million for the prevention of teen pregnancy “and related efforts,” (whatever these are.)
The President’s budget also provides $8.1 billion for “discretionary nutrition program supports, which is a $400 million increase over the [fiscal] 2010 enacted level.” The budget also provides $10 billion over 10 years for “program reforms” to enhance the “nutritional quality of school meals and snacks, expanding nutrition research and evaluation, and improving program management.” In the budget, too, is $989 million for Head Start and Early Start to serve 64,000 added families, and $1.6 billion for Child Care and Development. And on and on. The $787 billion stimulus act planners saw that more money for new jobs went to women, while it was men who represent 80 percent of the unemployed.
But money can’t buy love. Recently women rights advocates and other liberals attending the Netroots Nation meeting in Las Vegas July 24 weren’t happy at Obama’s absence. All they got was a video message in which Obama said, “ We can’t afford to slide backwards. Let’s finish what we started.” Leftists, however, have been disappointed in the many legislative compromises put together by the White House and Congressional Democrats. They’ve also groused at the fact that Guantanimo Bay hasn’t been closed, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, relating to gays and lesbians, hasn’t been dealt with, and combat in Iraq and anywhere else hasn’t ended.
Women’s groups are yelling foul at an Administration ban on abortion coverage in an insurance program for people with pre-existing conditions. It says “abortions will not be covered” in the plan “except in cases of rape or incest, or where the life of the woman would be endangered” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said, “We are deeply disappointed.”
Bob Herbert, a black op-ed columnist for The New York Times wrote in June that the president’s “excessively cautious approach to the national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable, and the organizations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law — the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others — should intensify their effort.”
A Fox News opinion poll of voters July 15 found that only 43 percent of voters approved of the job Obama is doing, 48 percent disapproved. A year ago, the report said, 47 percent approved of his policies. A July 27 Fox poll showed voters gave Congress an approval rating of only 21 percent and a disapproval rating of 71 percent. Other polls had similar results.
Many American women are fervently opposed to the Administration and Congressional policies. Under Obama, “the Democrats are unlashing a bevy of unpalatable surprises for women, including massive up-front government expansions and enormous tax increases that produce problems for American women and their families,” said a report from the Concerned Women for America (CWFA) in May. It was written by Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute. That’s the think tank for Concerned Women for America. Concerned Women for America is the country’s largest public policy women’s organization. It emphasizes family, sanctity of life, education, religious liberty and national sovereignty.
“In just 18 months,” Crouse wrote, “the current administration has produced extraordinary ‘change’; indeed, it threatens a huge ‘transformation’ of America. The majority of citizens not only disapprove of the ‘changes’ and ‘transformations,’ they actively oppose them. Citizens have picketed, protested, held town halls to express their opposition, and responded to poll after poll indicating their overwhelming opposition to the actions of the Democrat majority and the socialist agenda of the President.”
Crouse wrote that “women and families are the ones who bear the brunt of Obamanomics’ income redistribution,” A tenet of Obama’s health care law. It “was not immediately clear that women and families were the ones bearing the brunt of the new taxation hidden in ObamaCare. Supporters didn’t talk about the bill’s marriage penalty—the fact that it will redistribute wealth from married couples to cohabiting couples.” And “Nobody talked about the fact that the bill penalizes those employers that hire low-income workers, primarily single mothers and housewives needing a second income. So, instead of encouraging single mothers to marry the father of their children and to become financially independent by facilitating job growth, ObamaCare creates another avenue of dependency through health insurance subsidies.”
She also wrote that some argue that ObamaCare “will destroy marriage for the middle class the same way that the Great Society welfare state destroyed the black family with financial incentives for staying single. Many pro-marriage activists view” ObamaCare as “a direct attack on marriage.”
She continued, saying, “There is no way to address poverty in America without addressing the problem of single mothers and absent fathers. “ Yet the health care law “does exactly the opposite…promoting single motherhood and discouraging marriage. These subsidies are just one more of the numerous financial incentives in current government policy” encouraging rejection of marriage—“the Earned Income Tax credit, housing subsidies, food stamps, child support payments, and the welfare dependency programs that created and sustained the inner city matriarchal culture.”
The aura of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is exciting “right-thinking” women throughout the nation. On July 8 she posted on her Facebook a new video called “Mama Grizzlies.” The former Vice Presidential candidate is recruiting and endorsing GOP women across the country—spooking the Democrats. She’s not on any ballot, but she’s endorsing candidates for the November election with considerable success. She says on her video that this year “will be remembered as the year common-sense conservative women get things done for our country.” You betcha.
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